Open Access

This cumulative dissertation examines how couples with children in Germany divide paid and unpaid work and identifies several factors related to a more egalitarian division of labor. In the first paper, I focus on the division of paid work in couples with children, comparing female same-sex and different-sex couples, which constitutes an empirical novelty. Discussing the applicability of division of labor theories to same-sex couples, I further exploit the historically shaped gender culture of East and West Germany. Based on the German Microcensus (2010-2019) and using pooled OLS regressions, I show that female same-sex couples divide paid work more equally than different-sex couples. Comparing East and West Germany, I find a similarly equal division of paid work among same-sex and different-sex couples in the East, while different-sex couples in the West specialize more. The analysis highlights the importance of the cultural context and normative explanations of the division of labor. The second paper turns to childcare, the intersection of the paid working life with the father’s contribution to childcare being a key concern of researchers and policymakers. The COVID-19 pandemic and the short-time work scheme provided a “natural experiment” for investigating this nexus. Based on IAB-HOPP data and multinomial logistic regressions, we show that fathers in short-time work take over more care responsibilities than fathers continuously employed with regular working 1 hours. The findings indicate that policies targeting men’s working hours can affect the gendered distribution of childcare within couples. The third paper focuses on the methodological problem of analyzing the division of unpaid work in couples often from one partner’s perspective only. Therefore, I examine the determinants of ‘perception gaps’ (defined as the mismatches between partners’ responses). Based on pairfam data, I analyze respondents’ reports on housework and childcare during the transition to first parenthood and show that a substantial perception gap exists, with 30% regarding housework and 25% concerning childcare. Results of the logistic regressions indicate that perception gaps are lowest among couples where the woman is employed or highly educated. These findings clearly underline the importance of a dyadic perspective on the division of labor in couples.

While intrastate conflicts remain the dominant form of armed conflict and migration receives increasing attention, the international dimension of civil wars, particularly non-state sponsorship, has largely been overlooked. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of diasporas as external sponsors in intrastate conflicts. It investigates: (1) Why do diasporas support rebel organizations? (2) Under what conditions is diaspora support more or less likely? (3) How does diaspora sponsorship of rebel organizations impact civilian victimization and rebel governance? To understand the logic of diaspora support, I employ a principal-agent framework. Conflict, rebel group, diaspora, and homeland characteristics are determinants of diaspora sponsorship. I argue that diasporas aim for kin support and changes in the homeland and consequently prefer limited violence against civilians and co-ethnic civilians. Diasporas benefit from delegating the task of combat and limited civilian victimization but risk agency slack. Concurrently, the rebel organization gains additional resources but loses autonomy. I introduce an information-sharing mechanism between co-ethnics in the conflict zone and the diaspora, which enhances the monitoring capability of the diaspora. I employ a mixed-methods approach to answer the research questions. Interviews conducted in the Washington DC area with members of various diasporas and experts provide evidence for the information-sharing between the diaspora and co-ethnics. I produced a unique data set on diaspora support for African and Asian intrastate conflicts between 1989 and 2014. Findings from multiple large-N analyses, utilizing extreme bounds analysis, logistic regression, and negative binomial analyses, serve as the empirical base for examining the causes and consequences of diaspora sponsorship to rebel organizations. I demonstrate that conflict and rebel group characteristics are strong determinants of diaspora sponsorship, while homeland and diaspora characteristics yield mixed results. Diaspora support significantly reduces the number of civilian killings. The impacts on ethnic violence and rebel governance are heterogeneous. Overall, this dissertation enriches our understanding of diasporas’ roles as external actors in conflict dynamics and as non-state sponsors for rebel organizations. It opens further avenues for researching civilian-rebel relationships and host country-homeland dynamics. Policy discussions may follow around monitoring of sponsorship activities and the responsibilities of host countries.

This dissertation comprises three essays. Although their titles make clear their self-contained nature, all essays share a common motivation: to combine economic theory with modern tools of causal inference to understand applied problems. The first chapter studies honesty when the costs to behave honestly change. Using field data from a snack delivery company that employs an honesty payment system, the chapter presents an event study to analyze how price increases affect pay rates. The honesty payment system expects customers to pay a listed price for each consumed snack. This allows me to measure honesty with the pay rate that compares consumption to payments. The results, which draw on deliveries from several thousand firms, show that price increases that make honest behavior more costly cause more cheating. Price increases of 15% trigger a fall in pay rates of 11%. The second chapter studies a recent legal reform in Germany, which aims to lower commission rates of real estate agents by raising the cost salience of sellers. I find that the reform has backfired and real estate agents have exploited the transition to increase their commission rates. The findings document that in some regions real estate agents increase their commission by up to 2 percentage points, adding over e6,000 in transaction cost to the average home sale. As explicit collusion is unlikely in this setting, I argue that this arbitrary increase points to seller ignorance instead. To verify if and why sellers fail to induce price competition, I run a pre-registered survey experiment with 1,062 real estate agents. Although commission rates should be negotiated independently for each sale, the survey confirms that 85% of sellers do not attempt to negotiate lower commission rates. The randomized experimental questions suggest that real estate agents may cater to the low willingness of sellers to negotiate by providing misleading reference commission rates and shrouding the economic incidence for sellers. The third chapter is co-authored with Christian Traxler and Carsten Burhop and examines the causal effect of beer on crime based on unique panel data from Germany between 1882 and 1913. Using exogenous variation in the yield of spring barley, a key input in beer production, we identify a quantitatively and qualitatively significant effect of beer on violent crimes. This effect is mainly driven by a positive effect on assaults, where our findings suggest that a 1% increase in beer production raises assault rates by the same percentage. These findings are corroborated using a complementary empirical design that exploits a brewing tax reform in Prussia.

In the past decade, social media has revolutionized how governments create public value through online communication and collaboration with citizens. Despite this, academic literature still lacks a comprehensive understanding of how public value is disseminated via social media. This research delves into the process of public value creation on social media in New Zealand, a leading country in leveraging social media for government-to-citizen communication, particularly during crises. The study seeks to answer two questions about creating or eroding public value over social media. The first question investigates the socio-demographic factors correlating with citizens' varying perceptions of public value from social media adoption. The findings suggest that citizens with similar public value perceptions share common socio-demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, education, trust in government, platform usage, and following government accounts. The study also reveals differences in public value perceptions based on the platform type, with platforms like Twitter garnering more positive public value perceptions than Facebook. The second question examines how using social media in government can enhance or diminish public value perceptions among citizens. The research constructs a causal model where specific social media practices during peaceful and crisis times, along with the engagement of external stakeholders, lead to increased perceptions of public value creation. The study also uncovers two causal mechanisms for the erosion of public value. In the first model, government reactions to opposing opinions on social media, such as hiding or removing comments, result in low public value perceptions. The second model shows that over-posting or posting irrelevant information can reduce citizens’ trust in the government, limit government posts' reach, and lower public value perception. This research encourages future studies to replicate the experiment across various platforms and countries to better understand how public value can be created or eroded over social media.